Hi everyone,

I know that importing cars from the US is a well discussed topic on here, however I have just noticed that a Golf GTI - at list in the US - is well below half the price of a similarly specc'ed car over here at about CHF20,000.

Even allowing for the hassle of importing it, the tax, and lower resale this still potentially seems - on the surface - to make a lot of sense. I was just wondering if anyone has got any experience of importing this model of car or VW's in general, as many of the discussions I've seen on here are for higher priced cars or vehicles people already own.

Thanks

Suffolk

I'm also seriously looking at importing a VW as the lease on my VW Tiguan runs out shortly, after 3 years. The price I was quoted to buy it (a three year old car!) was the same price to buy a brand new one in the UK.

A friend has just imported a new Audi TT RS from the UK and made a massive saving, and the only downside I can see is that it appears to take quite a while.

Andrew.

Spoke to a UK dealer yesterday. He told me they have been instructed by the factory to add a temporary 20% surcharge on new lhd cars sold for export to protect european dealers. I am sure this will be different from make to make - and if they do it for export to another eu country probably also against one for the corner stones of the union.

I thought this practice was ruled to be illegal a few years ago.

Yeah this is illegal. It's one of the things a lot of dealers say to discourage you, but they have to sell you a LHD car and at the same price.

Whithin EU yes. Not so sure when it is to CH though.

When I tried to import my motorcycle from Italy to Switzerland I had to pay so much in modifications that it was nearly doubling the value of the bike itself. Remember that US and EU cars are set up differently and to adapt a US car to the Swiss standards will cost you definitely A LOT. Is it worth doing it in the end, considering time wasted and a lot of bureaucracy involved...?

I thought I read on here somewhere that that's not the case with very new cars any more, because the TUV standard is the same as the Swiss one?

In one word: No.